The Soviet Union was a group of what are now separate countries, dominated by Russia and existing from 1922 to 1991. Its full name was Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (CCCP), pronounced "Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik" (abbreviated as SSSR when written phonetically in English). The English name was the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR). Interestingly enough, the Soviet Union was not a union of Soviet republics (soviet is "council" in Russian, referring to a democratically elected workers council), but a one-party dictatorship.

Although it was a Communist (Marx would have called it "barracks-communism") nation, it called itself "socialist," in conformance with Karl Marx's definition of that word — a stage of society in which the working class controlled the means of production, which Marx believed would be a transitional phase before the State "withered away" and True Communism oozed into existence. This has led to the mistaken notion that all forms of socialism — even non-Marxist forms such as democratic socialism — are identical to communism. The same technique, applied to "German Democratic Republic" or "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" allows us to see that Democracy, Republicanism and Communism are also all the same thing; in the latter case, it also implies that people are all Communists.

The USSR was hardly a parade of sunshine and roses, but at the very least the Soviets did see to it that the parts of their population the leaders liked were taken care of. Mass slaughters and purges stopped after the end of Stalin's rule, the sheer brutality of which has been compared to the period of Nazi ascendancy. Indeed, after the fall of the USSR, life actually got worse in Russia and especially the union republics for a great many people, as social services were cut back, state-owned property largely fell into the hands of a few "business oligarchs," (who are less charitably called gangsters) many civil rights abuses continued, and the Russian economy entered a deep depression and the poverty rate eventually reached 40%. (Thank Yeltsin.) Also, many people used to the certainty provided by the Soviet system found it difficult to cope in a society where they were no longer guaranteed housing, employment, healthcare, education and even simply the ability to plan everything out, knowing the state will provide you the necessities.

Economic matters improved somewhat under the administration of President Vladimir Putin, but things have still not improved to the level of the later Soviet years, and some people still long for the good old times of the Soviet Union. The Russian Communist Party (which is overtly Stalinist) is still the second largest in the nation, and in a country where the ruling party faces widespread accusations of electoral fraud, that is an accomplishment.

There were also about twenty "autonomous republics" for the smaller ethnic groups. Their autonomy didn't extend much beyond having their own name on the bit of land they inhabited. The even-smaller-than-that ethnic groups also had counties and districts for them, including a Jewish Autonomous Region[wp] in the ancient Biblical homeland of, er, Siberia. The USSR's million or so Roma got jack all apart from a newspaper.

These countries were members of the Warsaw Pact, the mutual defense organization created by the Soviet Union to keep its friends close and its enemies closer. East Germany was reunified with West Germany in 1991; Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are now NATO allies, much to the great annoyance of Russia. The Warsaw Pact did not survive the end of the Soviet Union and now none of its former member countries are communist any longer.

Albania (withdrew from the pact after the split between Mao and the Soviets, now fiercely pro-US even by post-Soviet NATO member standards)

East Germany (DDR)[1] (Many older Germans still speak of "the wall in the mind," and there's still a substantial disparity between east and west even now, but by all indications younger Germans don't really get the fuss.)

Hungary (withdrew from the Warsaw Pact after the 1956 revolution but was forced to join again after the Soviet Union invaded it and crushed the revolution). Hungary took a more liberal approach to communism (known colloquially as "Goulash Communism"), which allowed, among other things, the marketing of the Rubik's Cube in the 1980s.[2]

Poland was permitted a remarkable array of personal freedoms and liberties alien to other countries behind the Iron Curtain, partially due to overt Western pressure (hundreds of thousands of Poles fought alongside the Allies against the Nazis) but also because of the continued influence of the Catholic Church within the country. In the 1980s Poland formed the biggest threat to the well-being of the entire Soviet empire: the independent Solidarity trade union led by Lech Walesa, which galvanised an inchoate natural opposition to Soviet hegemony, and Pope John Paul II, a Polish native, provided an inspirational figurehead for the deeply Catholic nation.

Romania pursued its own foreign policy under Ceaușescu, which included not invading Czechoslovakia.

Comecon was the communist version of the European Union. Besides the above, members were:

Mongolia, the second country to turn communist (in 1925), was among the first to follow Gorbachev's reforms and bring in democracy in early 1990.

North Korea (Kim Il-sung was really upset at Khrushchev for that whole "peaceful coexistence" thing. North Korean propaganda suddenly became anti-Soviet and denounced Khrushchev as a traitor to communism. Mao Zedong was Kim's new role model... or at least that was until the Cultural Revolution shocked Kim and prompted him to switch his loyalty back to the Soviets. By this time, the U.S.S.R. was led by Brezhnev, who was more to Kim's liking, though still not quite Stalinist enough for him. Kim would continue to play the Soviets and Chinese against each other for the rest of the Cold War, beginning North Korea's long tradition of being a huge annoyance to its own allies.)

From 1917 to 1944, the Internationale served as the Soviet national anthem. Near the end of the Great Patriotic War (as the Soviets called it), the government decided to reinvent the anthem, in the hopes of reinventing the country with it, making references to the Soviet's defeat of the Nazis, to install pride within the population.
The original version praised the union forged through "the will of the people." The chorus implored the Motherland to greatness and its people to follow the red flag to freedom. The second verse praised Lenin for showing the way and Stalin for leading them on. The third verse encouraged the army to fight on against the "daring, despicable invaders." This was changed to "we destroyed the invaders" after the war, as demonstrated in this version sung by Paul Robeson.

By the 1970s, the first verse and the first half of the second verse remained unchanged. However, mention of Stalin's leadership in the second verse had been replaced by praise for the people's righteousness. In the third verse, mention of the military's victory over the Nazis was replaced by praise of communism's "deathless ideal."

NOTE: The version below plays the same 1984 promotional film twice. The first time has Russian Cyrillic and English subtitles. The second has subtitles showing the phonetic pronunciations of the original Russian lyrics, and the lyrics in Spanish.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, another national anthem was commissioned. But the Rooskies didn't like it. As bombastic, nationalistic, and over-the-top as Гимн СССР's lyrics were, its melody and harmony rank among the most gorgeous of any national anthem ever written.[4] So about five years later, the Russian Federation reintroduced "Гимн СССР" with new lyrics. (Although they did keep the first lines of the chorus — "Славься Отечество, наше свободное!" — which (roughly translated) means "Sing to the Fatherland and to our freedom!")

Intriguingly, both versions of the USSR national anthem and the post-Soviet Russian Federation anthem were written by the same man, Sergey Mikhalkov (1913-2009), who was a real-life example of a "Vicar of Bray."[5]

While the Soviet Union made plenty of internationally recognized contributions to real science (especially in the more socially detached domains such as mathematics, physics and chemistry), they had a habit of ripping off the scientific and technological achievements of the "corrupt, capitalist West" (most notably in the case of the "atomic spies").

Also, entire branches of science (such as genetics, cybernetics or sociology) were known to fall out of favor with the Party because of nepotism and ideological bias, being ostracized as "bourgeois pseudoscience." Instead, the state invested in dubious research such as abiotic oil and Lysenkoism. This was especially true under Joseph Stalin; however, these started to fade during the era of Khrushchev. The study of parapsychology, however, continued until at least 1975.[6]

↑ Seriously, listen to it without paying attention to the words some time. Particularly one of the versions rendered by a large chorus and full orchestra. You'll feel patriotic all over even if you're not Russian... until you remember the massacres.